The increasing specialization of American physicians has heightened concern over the availability and alleged fragmentation of medical care. Most analyses of medical careers which have attempted to understand the implications of this trend or to propose strategies for minimizing its adverse consequences have focused on specialty choice. However, specialty choice is, at best, a crude indicator of a physician's many professional roles. As such, its explanatory power is limited. Most investigators have also looked at the consequences of specializations in vacuo - without taking into account the ways in which subsequent career contexts may affect role characteristics. Therefore, a new approach which takes specialty into account but looks at other aspects of the physician's role in context is needed. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the attainment of specific professional roles among a national sample of 2821 American physicians who were studied from 1956 to 1976. First, I will investigate the degree to which role characteristics preferred by medical school seniors in 1960 are attained sixteen years later. These characteristics include: intellectual challenge, patient contact, teamwork with other physicians, work pressure and prestige. Second, organization theory holds that professional roles are often influenced by the formal structure of the organization with which the subject is affiliated. Therefore, I propose to evaluate the effect of past and present organizational affiliations on professional role attainment. Both steps in the analysis take specialty into account but are directed toward uncovering processes of role attainment regardless of specialty. The implications of differential role attainment on physician satisfaction and type of service provided will be discussed. Data for this study come from the Association of American Medical Colleges Longitudinal Survey (1956-1976). Methods of analysis will include index construction, cross-classification and multiple regression.